New Open Licence Compatibility Tool Launched by CIPPIC

Open licences have become a popular means by which works covered by copyright or database rights are made available for use and reuse. In fact, open licences are so popular that even governments are embracing them. Canada’s federal government, for example, has launched its own open government licence, and similar licences have been adopted by provincial and municipal governments. Some open licences contain restrictions (such as on commercial use) – or requirements (such as attribution), while others contain virtually no limitations. Open licences promote sharing of works as well as the creation of new works derived from or built upon the licensed works.

The popularity of open licences, as well as the diverse contexts in which they are developed and used, mean that compatibility between the licences can be a problem for users who wish to combine two or more works that have been made available under open licences. While basic technical interoperability is required when combining digital works, ‘legal interoperability’ is a term used to describe the ability to compile works made available under different open licences in such a manner that the legal status of the resulting compilation is clear. This can be surprisingly challenging. Given that open licences are generally designed to be accessible and user-friendly so as not to stifle creativity under a blanket of legalese, it can be a problem if creators are left having to determine the compatibility of the different rights and permissions set out in a variety of open licences.

This is what makes the newly launched website CLIPOL.org an interesting and potentially important resource. CLIPOL.org is an initiative of the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), and was funded in part by Natural Resources Canada through its GeoConnections programme. The website contains a catalogue of open licences from around the world and from a range of different contexts. Two apps are available from the site to use with the licence database. The “text compare” app has two functions. The first allows a user to evaluate the compatibility of different licences in the database. Highlighting and redlining are used to show how the actual licence terms differ in the two licences. The second a schematic comparison of a family of similar licences. The other app available from the site is a compatibility tool which allows users who are thinking of combining works under different licences to assess the extent to which the different licences are compatible.

The website also offers a useful set of resources on open licencing through the link to the CIPPIC Open Governance site, and it provides links to other major sites that deal with open licencing issues.

The project is already publicly available, but it will be formally launched through a free webinar hosted by GeoConnections on February 11, 2014.